'Unanswered Questions' Remain over Magdalenes

By Louise Hogan
Irish Independent
March 4, 2013

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/unanswered-questions-remain-over-magdalenes-29106346.html

MAGDALENE Laundry campaigners warned there were still more questions to be answered, as flowers were laid at graves to mark the long-awaited apology from the State.

Tears were shed as dozens of bunches of flowers were placed at the Magdalene burial plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Claire McGettrick, spokeswoman for Justice for Magdalenes, said they staged the flower-laying event to mark the apology from Taoiseach Ends Kenny and to show the women are "wholly blameless".

"It is just to convey the apology to them and make them part of that somehow."

The apology came after the publication of a report that revealed the State was responsible for almost one-quarter of all admissions to the laundries.

Ms McGettrick warned the survivor campaign groups were "not nearly finished yet" as the report left unanswered questions – including the 22 extra bodies found during the exhumation of remains at High Park convent in 1993.

Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald stressed they were "not just numbers" but women who suffered and deserved to be remembered.

Christina Nicholson, the eldest daughter of Teresa Pacelli (nee Carroll), fought back tears as she explained they frequently found their mother crying when they were children, but were never given any explanation. They later learned she had spent time in Magdalene Laundries.